


The Song of Yael

by fresne



Category: Jewish Scripture & Legend, תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 21:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: Yael watched the battle from beneath the great oak.She watched nine hundred chariots stuck in mud.That was not her song. Her song was her choice of what came after.





	The Song of Yael

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antediluvian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antediluvian/gifts).



Yael glanced back up at the sky and all its clouds. She looked at the Kishon River running fast through the valley. She muttered to herself, "Be struck by lightning or be carried away by the river." She whistled to the dogs, Hulel and Merom. They circled back around the flock of sheep herding them up the hill. It was slow going with the wind battering them. But there was a low ridge of limestone near the oak that would make for a natural pen.

Heber and Yael worked quickly. They pitched his tent first to one side of the ridge with well pounded stakes to withstand the wind. Hers went up next. Between them they herded the flock and pushed their wagon to form the fourth side of a pen. She gave each dog a piece of jerked mutton. They wagged their tails and took their places sheltering under the wagon. They tethered the oxen to the wagon for what protection that could give.

Above lightning raked a sky. Not a single solitary streak, but as if the lightning where the antlers of an ancient and lordly stag. As if it were the tributary of a green river. Thunder shook the hill side. Yael gathered firewood as quickly as she could and went into her tent. She built a small fire ring by hollowing the earth and piling stones. The smoke from the fire was just beginning its journey out the opening in the tent's roof, when the deluge came. Water slid down the slanting sides of the tent and down behind the oiled skins, while outside rain pounded on the tent from all sides.

Heber ducked into her tent shading layers of soaked wool. "It's as if the banks of the Milky Way have been broken and all the water is flooding out."

"All the better that we've taken what shelter when we did," said Yael. "All the better if we'd not have had to take shelter at all." She glared at the fire.

"Yeah, yeah." Heber put her second best pot outside the tent to gather water. "My father is set in his ways. You know that."

"Yes, but to think we can avoid taking sides with the Canaanites coming down from their cities in the north, while the tribes of Israel are all around us is foolish. The Canaanites give no aid to our tribe. What they do is make the roads unsafe for travelers. They don't barter in good faith when we go to their cities. They are arrogant and cruel."

Heber held up a hand. "I agreed, which is why we are here on a hillside and not back with the others." He pulled the pot back inside. It was half full of water.

Yael dropped a heated stone into the pot to warm the water for stew.

Heber laughed. "Tell me that the reason we're out here isn't because this Judge of the Israelites is a woman."

Yael dropped pieces of meat into the pot one by one as if to plant stakes in her argument. "Tell me that the reason your father your father will not side with the Israelites is because Deborah is a woman."

Since Heber could not, he peaceably set to hanging his clothes to dry.

They went to bed early that night, huddling close in Heber's tent against the cold. In the morning, the rain stopped. They came out of their tents to find that the Kishon River had completely overflown its banks. Wide stretches of the flat valley shimmered as if it were a lake. Across that watery landscape, a small group of travelers on horseback galloped, splashing as they went. The reason for their haste soon became apparent. Behind them raced hundreds of iron bound chariots bearing the banners of Sisera of Canaan.

Yael recognized the palm of Deborah on the banner of the lead rider. As they came closer, she recognized Deborah herself upon a roan horse. She found herself chanting. "Go! Go! Go!"

Beside her, Heber said, "Not so clever after all."

She turned to glare at him, but stopped. She pointed. "Look see. The chariots are sticking in the mud."

Soldiers were leaping out of their chariots and raising in their arms in the universal sign of the traveler wondering what god has turned against them.

It was then that the Israelites struck. Yael had not even noticed the small hillocks where they had been hiding. One moment they were merely brown lumps of earth. In the next, they bristled with thousands spears and shields. "Oh, how brilliant. Deborah lured Sisera here for exactly this." Her hand flew to her mouth to catch her laugh. This was no act of amusement. Men were dying. Cruel men, who demanded a tithe at every ford. Who did not keep the roads safe for the traveler. She brought out her mending and set to it, watching the battle. Across the valley, she saw Deborah dismount and similarly watch.

Yael waved at her.

"What are you doing?" said Heber.

"Waving to another woman with many tasks," said Yael. "Now hush, or I'll sew the front of your tunic to the back.

The army of Sisera scattered. The chariots that made them so mighty in battle, sunk halfway to the wheel.

Yael saw a man with a golden helm run in their direction.

"Crap, crap, crap," muttered Heber. He looked at their tents. Their little flock. "He'll want to hide here because we aren't his enemies and by the laws of hospitality we'll have to protect him. But if the Israelites find him here, which they will, all is lost."

Yale looked at her dear sweet husband, whose tents were staked on this hill because he had agreed with her over his father. "Don't worry. I will take care of everything."

"What will you do?" He looked at her worriedly. "

"Don't worry. Go into your tent and do not come out until I call you." Heber looked uncertainly down the hill. He went into his tent. Yael put aside her mending. She waited until Sisera crested the hill. She called to him. "Here my lord, come here. Hide in my tent. Don't be afraid."

"You're a Kenite!" Sisera pushed past her into the tent. She followed after him. He sat down next to the fire ring. As if he were her own child, she wrapped a soft blanket around him. The one her mother-in-law had given her with the hideous green weaving of what might be a camel or might be a frog.  

Out of the sight of his defeated army, Sisera regained his arrogance. "I'm thirsty woman. Bring me water."

"For such a prince as you, I can do better than that." She went to the wagon and returned with a skin of milk. She poured it into her wedding bowl, which was engraved with images of the clouds, which was fitting given what had defeated his army. He drank from the milk deeply.

He curled up there by the fire ring. He said, "Stand by the door and tell anyone who comes that there's no one here." She stared at the back of his head and wondered at how he'd lived so long as to think her tent would not be searched. She placed over another blanket over him. The one with holes in it that she'd been about to mend.

She went to the door and slowly worked the tent stake by her feet out of the earth. It came easily as if leaping into her hand. The rain had softened the earth well. She picked up her hammer from the wagon. It was familiar in her hand. Inside her tent, Sisera was already asleep. Defeat had wearied him.

As she had many times with an oxen or a ram, she held the tent stake where the skull was thin. She gently cradled his head with one hand. His eyes didn't even flutter as she drove the stake in with one blow. The blankets were ruined. Spattered with blood. Yael couldn't quite decide if she'd tell her mother-in-law that fate of her blanket or not. She decided that that that could come later.

She went back outside to pet and make much of her dogs while waiting for an Israelite. Any Israelite. The one who came was Barak, the general in charge of the army. "Kenite, where is Sisera? Deborah said he ran in this direction."

Yael tossed a stick down the hill for her dogs to chase. "I will show you where the man you're looking for is." She didn't move from where she was sitting.

"What do you want?"

She smiled brightly. "A place under the palm of Deborah. If she finds my advice useful, a place at her side. Free passage for the Kenites when they travel the roads made safe by her leadership."

He frowned. "You ask for a great deal."

She spread her hands. "You will soon see that I am worth that and more."

"I cannot speak for Deborah, but you have my word on it that the Kenites will travel freely through the lands of the Naphtali and the Zebulun. I cannot speak for the other tribes."

"It is good." She hopped down from the wagon. She pulled back the cloth of her tent. "There is the one you seek."

Barak gasped. "He's dead."

"He has a tent stake through his skull, so I should think so." Yael reminded herself that this was nothing more or less than what had gone on below. The burden of breaking hospitality was on her alone. Then as if hammering another stake, she said, "I did what the army of the Israelites could not do."

"He was defeated by a woman." Barak seemed to find this funny. As if his army wasn't led by a woman. As if Deborah hadn't lured Sisera into defeat where his chariots became hindrances.

She shook her head and whistled for her dogs. She called out to Heber. "Heber, we need to strike camp."

By now there were Israelites everywhere. Marveling over Sisera. No few of them looked at Heber in admiration. "Brave man to have such a wife."

Heber looked at Sisera's body. He asked Yael. "Is that the blanket my mother wove for you on Sisera?"

"Yes."

Heber did not say anything more.

By that evening, they made camp with Deborah. She was shorter than Yael would have expected. She was also nursing a child of less than a year.

Yael could have wished her first words weren't, "You didn't bring the child to the battle did you?"

Deborah sighed. "Barak wouldn't go to battle without me."

"Ah," Yael sat down next to her. "It's a heavy burden, but one you are clearly able to bear."

They sat awhile by the fire. Deborah said, "I saw the blanket that Sisera was wrapped in." She gestured to the north "I think it will make excellent spoils for the kingdom of Canaan when we return his body to his mother."

Yael nodded soberly. "There were all the child of a mother."

"Even so." Deborah used a set of tongs to pick up a rock to put in her stew pot. "Tonight, we will share our dinner."

This was not to be the last time. For over the next forty years of peace, Deborah and Yael often shared a pot as they sat together under the palms in the hill country between Ramah and Bethel and listened to disputes.


End file.
